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That night Danny was afraid to go to bed. He stood hanging onto the chill satin of the curtains. The breeze stirred coolly through his wet hair. He hadn’t eaten, just grabbed a sandwich, pleading a headache.
John had ignored him solidly for the rest of that day. At supper his mother had said he looked ill, and God knows, by then he felt ill – ill enough for Ian to let him shower before him, at any rate. Be thankful for small mercies.
He had watched John go across to the pub an hour ago, while he had been waiting on Rab finishing up in the bathroom. He’d paused at the pub door and suddenly turned and looked back up at the house, right up at Danny’s bedroom window.
Danny had dived back behind the curtain, then began cursing himself. “What the hell am I doing?” he’d hissed. But his heart still pounded with fright, as if he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
He lay on his bed now, watching the clock, careful to keep his hair off the pillow. Half eleven.
The back door banged. Danny closed his eyes.
After a minute or two he heard them come up the stairs together, talking and laughing. So he had ordained to honour them with his holy presence tonight? Big of him.
He listened as each went into the bathroom, then their doors closed for the night. The silence was absolute.
Christ, he would never sleep tonight. He hadn’t even undressed yet. He got up and went to the window again and sat by the chair.
He didn’t hear the door open, only the click of the door closing. He turned, only half curious at the odd noise, not yet realising what it was.
When John spoke, his stomach plunged as if he had been handling a knife that had slipped.
“Still up?”
John was leaning back against the door, both his hands behind him, holding the door handle. His voice was quiet. To Danny, menacing.
Danny stood up. His legs felt like rubber. “No, I’m asleep. This is my astral projection. What do you want, John?”
“Only to talk.” He pushed himself up off the door and came towards him, hands open, palm outwards, as if to say, Look, no tricks. “Only to talk, baby.”
Danny could see the moonlight on his face, the deep-set black eyes, the wide curving mouth, the high, broad planes of his face, the oddly bleached hair, so much brighter than he ever remembered it going before. He thought his brother had never looked more thuggish, or more persuasively charming.
John stopped his advance. He’d hardly moved any distance at all, Danny realised. He stood with his hands on the headboard of Danny’s old bed, unmistakably leaning on it.
Danny realised abruptly he was drunk. John, who was always so careful, so in control, was drunk? He felt an immense surge of gratification. His fucking great ugly lump of a brother was drop-dead drunk.
John sat down heavily on the bed then patted it like a large, clumsy uncle. “Why don’t you come sit beside me?”
“I’m fine where I am.”
John looked up at him. He grinned. It looked evil in the dark moonlight. Nothing drunk about his dirty rapacious grin. “Promise I won’t rape you.” The emphasis was unmistakable, the voice mocking.
“I’m fine where I am, John. Get on with it.”
John got up, almost creakily, leaning on his knees. He came towards him until he was suddenly close, uncomfortably close. Danny backed away until he was pinned against the window. He wished now he had sat on the bed. He felt out-manoeuvred. John’s breath was close enough to smell. He smelt of spirits, not beer. He smelt like his father.
“You stink.” Danny jerked his face away. He turned back in time to see John’s face tighten. He felt perversely pleased with the reaction.
He stepped to one side, intending to move round him, but John’s hand shot out indecently fast and grabbed his shirtfront, jerking him up against him. “Don’t get fucking smart with me. It was a joke.” He shook Danny slightly for emphasis. “A joke.”
Danny pulled out of his grip and walked towards the door. “Sure.”
Suddenly he was spun round by his hair. He felt as if his scalp was being torn off.
John pushed him down on the bed then caught hold of Danny’s shirtfront and lifted him again. “You started it.”
Danny felt the sweat of anxiety immediately soak the armpits of his shirt. He felt suddenly soiled, as if he’d never bathed, as if he’d come straight from the hay baler to here, as if John had been with him all along, just a continuation of the same scene, the scene that had somehow started that morning, in his room.
“Lying there pretending you were asleep, your dick twitching, moaning my name.”
“You fuck off, you liar.” But Danny’s voice was a weak whisper.
John let him go suddenly, with a little push, and he fell back.
Danny struggled up onto his elbows, staring up at him. “You liar,” he said again. It had more force now.
“Keep your voice down. Christ knows, we wouldn’t want your mother to hear.”
“You’re lying, you scumbag, I wouldn’t suck your dick for mon…” Danny stopped, realising too late what he’d said. He saw John’s white teeth glimmer in a carnivorous smile.
“No? Why don’t you prove it?” He leaned forward and pulled Danny up against him, a sharp, aggressive tug. The smell of soap was strong on his body. It felt hot and hard, dry as a lizard. No sweat now. “You’re awake now. Let’s see you prove it.”
Danny prised him off, succeeded in half-sliding off the bed. But John caught his legs in a tackle, grunting with effort. Danny lashed out with a stream of low hissed invective. The bed thumped against the wall. Suddenly his parents’ room door opened, flooding the floor of his room with light.
“Shit,” John’s voice hissed in the dark.
Danny went limp. John had one arm round his neck, the other locking his arm behind his back. They sat there like that, a tableau, neither daring to move.
Whoever it was went into the bathroom. Slowly, John eased his stranglehold.
Whoever it was came back out and went back into their room. The light went out.
Their bodies came apart like something coming unstuck. Danny was aware of John’s weight lifting off the bed. There was a silence, no sense of movement. It went on too long, too unnaturally quiet, as if he stood there in the dark, waiting. Finally the door opened, a barely perceptible click, then John’s voice whispered, “Next time, baby.”
THREE
Twice Danny woke in the night, convinced he heard the door handle rattle. He woke washed in cold sweat, his chest suffocated with holding his breath, and listened.
Only the creaking silence of the house, the distant tick of the old downstairs clock.
He woke finally to his mother banging on the door. “Danny? Come on, you’re late again. Shake a leg.”
He mumbled a reply and struggled up into a sitting position. He felt like a limp rag. He was sticky with sweat. His face felt stiff and sore.
His mother banged on the door again. “Did you hear me, Danny?” The handle rattled irritably.
“I’m up. Just give us a bloody minute, will you?”
There was a pause, then he heard her moving off down the hall, ominously silent.
When he got down to breakfast the rest had already gone out.
His mother looked at his face. His white skin took on a bruised look when he was tired or ill. He had it now. “I take it your headache hasn’t cleared up?” She cut him some bread.
He shook his head. “Couldn’t sleep. Too hot or something.” He didn’t look up at her. It seemed to hurt his eyeballs just to move them.
She stopped what she was doing and looked directly at him, then she came right out with it. “Why was your door locked?”
Danny immediately flared up, “I’m allowed to lock the bloody door. That’s what the fucking key’s for.”
“I will not stand for that language, Danny. I asked you a civil question.”
“Well here’s my civil answer…” He pushed up out of his chair, facing her furiously. “I am nineteen years old. I’ll lock my bloody door if I want to.”
She turned away sharply to the kitchen sink, her back speaking volumes. Danny glared at her, daring her to say another word, then turned and slammed out of the kitchen.
Danny spent the whole day by himself, clearing rubble down by the copse of trees that grew by the river.
Ian came down at half one and wanted to know why he hadn’t been up for lunch. “You’re in deep shit, little brother.”
“So I’ll swim.” Danny hefted another boulder onto the trailer.
“You’ll more likely have to eat it.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Ian raised his eyebrows, smiling faintly, then simply turned and walked away up the hill.
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